Strategy by Design

fastcompany.com: "In order to do a better job of developing, communicating, and pursuing a strategy, the head of Ideo says, you need to learn to think like a designer. Here's his five-point plan for how to make the leap...Hit the Streets; Recruit T-Shaped People; Build to Think; The Prototype Tells a Story; Design Is Never Done"

When IDEO speaks, well you get the point. Good brain food as expected. When people meet folks like us, it's easy to see why learning to "think like a designer" might be a scary idea ;-P

Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac Version 7.0.2 Update

"This update is recommended for all users who are using Virtual PC for Mac Version 7.0 or 7.0.1. This update improves overall stability of Virtual PC and allows Virtual PC to run on Mac OS X Version 10.4.1."

Brands Suffer Youth Indecision

brandchannel.com: "The logic is simple, but the practice is far from easy. Successful urban youth branding involves a lot more than a few hip-hop artists and skateboard pros (although these do tend to be standard props)..."

How to Write Title Tags for Your Web Pages

"When it comes to search engine optimization, the single most important sentence that you will write for your website is the title tag of your main page..."

BusinessWeek Announces 'The Best Product Designs of 2005'

"Many of the winning entries from this year's competition for Industrial Design Excellence Awards spring from a close observation of the customer..."

Includes a number of related articles and interesting categorizations.

Search Study Offers Marketers Tidbits

"Men and women search differently, searchers are not very loyal, and most searchers don't know -- or care -- about the difference between natural and paid search results...This kind of information will not necessarily help marketers target paid search campaigns...but it could help them gain insight into who might be responding to the keywords they've targeted and how to best respond to them."

Microsoft pushes spam-filtering technology

"Sometime around November, Hotmail and MSN will flag as potential spam those messages that do not have the tag to verify the sender"

US poised to rule on cloned livestock

"Meat and milk from cloned farm animals is about to be declared safe for human consumption by the US Food and Drug Administration..."

Holy cow! Well, I guess I'll start designing ideas for "No Cloned Animal Products Used" labels (or something to that effect) - to go along with the various 'No antibiotics', 'Organic', and 'No GMO' lablels I've grown accustomed to seeking out when selecting food for purchase.

Odeo: Beta Of New 'Podcast' Service Launches

Odeo: Listen, Sync, Create: "Discover, Create, and Subscribe to original audio content for your iPod or MP3 player"



Interesting looking new 'podcast' and audio blog service...

Ameritrade to Acquire TD Waterhouse U.S.A.

"Expects Annualized Gross Synergies of $578 Million; Six Dollars Per Share Dividend for Ameritrade Shareholders..."

'My Dream Home' & the Deep Design process

fastcompany.com: "Like general contractors with a psych degree, the architectural firm called fathom plumbs the depths of your soul to design the house you want..."To really deliver good architecture, you have to have a very clear understanding of what your client is thinking, and you can't get that from a surface conversation,""

This short n' sweet article highlights an important aspect of the design process in general. Often, clients will begin identifying what they want by pointing to what they admire about other entities. It's when this conversation gets balanced by turning toward the inner personality of the company that things get more interesting - and fun.

creativepro.com - Adobe Talks: InDesign

"There are two things that Adobe said really helped the adoption of InDesign...the first was Mac OS X...Ironically, the second component that helped InDesign was Quark, according to Adobe. Quark was not as quick bringing QuarkXPress to Mac OS X, which left the market open to competitors..."

That's about it, Quark had pretty consistently been a laggard who offloaded new features onto third party extention developers. Mac OS X helped shine the spotlight on this tendency for sure.

Future of DVD mired in confusion

"The future of DVD recording is up in the air, after Sony claimed that talks between rival factions pushing the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD factions have collapsed..."

Morningstar's Mansueto reportedly reaches agreement to buy 'Inc.,' 'Fast Company'

"Joseph Mansueto, chairman-CEO of investment research firm Morningstar, has reached a tentative agreement to acquire Inc. and Fast Company magazines from Gruner + Jahr USA, according to people familiar with matter..."

Google Wallet planned to rival PayPal?

"Google is preparing an online-payment system that would compete with PayPal, according to an online retailer who has been approached by Google to take part in the effort...plans for a payment service, which they referred to as Google Wallet."

"iFill" Sends Internet Radio Station Content from Desktop to iPod

"(get) Music from thousands of radio streams. iFill streams mp3 files from thousands of free radio stations directly to your iPod..."

Study finds trade shows on the rebound

"The exhibition industry continues to rebound from its troubles earlier this decade, according to a report from the Center on Exhibition Industry Research..."

EFF Releases Legal Guide for Bloggers

eff.org: "Whether you're a newly minted blogger or a relative old-timer, you've been seeing more and more stories pop up every day about bloggers getting in trouble for what they post...That's why EFF created this guide, compiling a number of FAQs designed to help you understand your rights and, if necessary, defend your freedom..."

Google Sitemap Generator Dreamweaver MX Extension

"This command will generate an xml sitemap of your whole site that you can submit to google for better indexing."

This appears to make short work of the Google sitemapping requirements. Very nifty!

Opera 8 Web Browser for Mac Released

Download the latest version here...

bugaboo daytrips - well designed maps as marketing freebie

"Welcome to Bugaboo daytrips. This is a growing archive of suggested daytrips for parents who want to spend an inspiring day with their child that does not include eating sweets or watching Shrek for the 322nd time..."

Here's a great value-added bit of online marketing material for a stroller company - well designed walking maps for you to stroll with. I'm also posting because, hey, here are some cool free street maps for some great cities.

Veer Launches Shuttleboard: A whole new kind of online lightbox

Veer Shuttleboard: Here's something neat, it's almost like a rudimentary layout app built in Flash. Instead of emailing your client a plain old bin of images saved in a traditional lightbox, you can move, crop, resize, and basic rectangular layouts with your earmarked images. On top of that, you can add various typefaces to your lightbox and include them as customized text in your layout. It's kind of like building a rough comp right on the stock site. Nice idea - kudos to Veer for really thinking about how designers use stock sites - a move most likely prompted by Adobe adding basic stock search and purchase right into its Studio apps.

Widget Creator in Apple Development Tools

"Freeware for beginning and advanced widget designers. It will help you to create widgets faster than ever with a maximum of ease..."

Music industry eyes 'casual piracy'

MercuryNews.com: "The record labels are in pursuit of a new class of music pirates -- not the millions who download bootlegged songs over the Internet but those who copy music CDs for their friends..."

Could going down this path finally mark the official death spiral for CDs as a popular distribution format? For example, I considered buying the new Foo Fighters physical CD rather than getting it from iTunes (so that I could have highest quality sound, a printed jacket etc.). However, the standard CD release is copy-protected, so I couldn't import into iTunes for my own personal digital listening. So it made more sense to buy the download format, because at least then I can burn a CD or include songs in a Mix. And iTMS offers it with a printable book and bonus video. Why would I want a CD version then...?

The only people who will increase revenue via this latest scheme are the third party developers licensing the useless copy protection to the record labels. The labels will then continue to increase their overhead costs, which will come back and hit consumers. Give up and sell downloads at $.25/ea already! Sorry felling a bit miffed about this I guess...

Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Adobe Bridge

arstechnica.com offers up an in-depth real world look at the latest Photoshop upgrade. Blogging this article for selfish reasons, so I don't loose track of it.

Techno-rebels spread wireless network vision

"Meet the geeks, a selective handful of Portland's brightest computer science gurus who gather weekly at Node 236 - aka Tom Higgins's house - to discuss all things wireless. They are modern-day freedom fighters trying to encourage people to host wireless connections to the Internet..." Word.

Video content set free on Web

"Suddenly it seems that everyone on the Internet, from corporate giants to nonprofits, wants to host your bulky video content--free of charge..."

Go register on these free services now, before all the good usernames are taken ;)

Adobe flaw puts PCs at risk

CNET News.com: "A security vulnerability in the Adobe License Management Service, a component used for product activation, 'can lead to an unauthorized person gaining access to the user's computer,' Adobe said in a security advisory posted to its Web site late last week."

Note - only effects Windows version(s).

eBay readies new Web site for business purchases

"EBay said it will launch a new Web site on Wednesday: www.ebaybusiness.com. The site will target small and midsize businesses..."

Cosmetic Changes at Google Precede Larger Overhaul

SiteProNews: "Google is undergoing some of the most sweeping changes in its short, seven year history. As of next week, Google will have finished sorting what might be its largest algorithm shift ever as the final points of the 3.5 part Bourbon Update were installed last Monday..."

Microsoft offers beta of Adobe rival

CNET News.com: "Microsoft has released a test version of a new professional graphics tool code-named Acrylic. The software is based on Expression, the graphics application Microsoft acquired with its 2003 purchase of Hong Kong company Creature House..."

Interesting, I remember using the first version of Expression. It never really gained traction. However now that people are more accustomed to vector-based painting in apps like Illustrator, they could get new attention if they fixed the cumbersome UI. BTW here's a code name that I actually like.

Quark Initiates Search for CEO

creativepro.com: "Today Quark announced that effective immediately, Kamar Aulakh is no longer with the company..."

I heard this rumor that all the resumes they've gotten so far have been PDFs created with InDesign (tee hee)

Seagate goes perpendicular with hard drives

CNET News.com: "Perpendicular recording is the next phase of drive storage... Instead of lying flat, the disc is magnetized so that the bits stand on end. The result is a drive that can hold almost double the amount of data of current designs..."

Cool

Pop-Up Stores: The New Marketing Trend of Temporary Brand Environments

talentzoo.com: "When it comes to “What’s Hot?” marketers are always seeking the next “big” thing. The trend du jour seems to be the temporary brand environment better known as the “pop-up.”..."

Intel Ranks the 100 Most Unwired U.S. Cities

"Intel's 3rd Annual "Most Unwired Cities" survey ranks the top 100 U.S. cities and regions for the greatest wireless Internet accessibility..."

Seattle comes in #1 and, hey, Portland is #4

Macromedia Unveils Flash Platform

creativepro.com: "Proven technology powers digital content, applications, and communications; Macromedia previews next-generation Flash Player..."

Read the release above, or simply go view the Platform Overview Video at Macromedia's website.

Microsoft, Adobe to support PPC and Intel processors

macminute.com: "We think this is a really smart move on Apple's part and plan to create future versions of our Creative Suite for Macintosh that support both PowerPC and Intel processors," said Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe..."

Think Different Inside

"Apple throws the switch, aligns with Intel"

Wow, I couldn't resist being one of the many blogs to highlight this. Maybe the fact that Jobs has revealed that Intel chips have secretly been behind a lot of recent software demos was a clever way to elicit acceptance from those who always complain that Steve's computer is always snappier than a typical OS X install ;-)

AIM: You Have Free Mail

AIM users now get 2GB of free spam and virus protected email. Actual AOL subscribers get unlimited storage...

Google Unveils Sitemaps Tool

clickz.com: "The Sitemaps program aims to optimize Google's crawling activities, leading to better search results, and to give site owners more input into how their sites are crawled..."

McAfee acquires Wireless Security

CNET News.com: "McAfee has confirmed its purchase of Wireless Security, a maker of Wi-Fi protection products for consumers and small businesses..."

Alert: iPhoto 'ruining' photos under Tiger?

The Irish Trojan's Blog: "iPhoto has developed a nasty habit of spontaneously changing the colors of my photos when I am making non-color-related changes in Edit mode. Well, it turns out I'm not alone -- not by a longshot. Dozens of Mac users have been reporting the same problem for weeks!"

Skype brings video calling to users

spymac.com: "Skype has partnered with Dialcom to enable video conferencing using the Skype P2P engine..."

JetClock app displays the time in 4 different cities of your choice

It's great having the opportunity to work for clients in different parts of the world. Well conceived freeware utilities like this make setting up meetings in different timezones etc. a bit easier.